For 2025, I returned to reading business books after taking a break in 2024 with fiction and theatre-related books. However, I didn’t blog much about books this year, writing instead on a range of issues that interested my clients and me.

Now, I want to share my five favorite books for 2025. You’ll see a short summary of each along with each book’s big contribution from my point of view.

All five are grounded in research with practical tips, which can help us humans become better and take advantage of our brain’s neuroplasticity. And we humans benefit from easy-to-apply tips, per one of my favorite quotes:  “Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

1.What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice & Change by Emily Falk. 

The book’s focus is how to make more meaningful decisions about issues you encounter in your day-to-day life. Rather than always default to the path of least resistance, you can learn how to  take actions that better align with what you care about most.

Note that for more than a decade, I’ve been following Emily’s research in her role as  professor of communication, psychology, and marketing at the University of Pennsylvania. She also directs the Communication Neuroscience Lab there. Besides conducting inspired and useful research studies, Emily writes persuasively on topics that many of us care about. Check out this 2021 opinion piece Why storytelling is an important tool for social change for the Los Angeles Times.  So when she published her first book this year, I read it immediately, enjoyed it, and recommended it to others.

The book’s big contribution: In easy-to-read and understand language, Emily explains the brain’s value system. In other words, this is the amount of reward your brain expects you to derive from a particular actiony you might take in a particular moment. She explains that by understanding the brain’s value calculation, which is the often-subconscious mechanism by which the brain suggests everyday choices for us, we can take more self-control of our thinking and our decision-making. We’ll start to work more strategically by changing what we pay attention to. That helps us connect more meaningfully with others, expand our range of choices, and taking actions that fit better with our values.

2. Shift: Managing Your Emotions—So They Don’t Manage You by Ethan Kross.

Ethan’s goal is to help readers learn how to convert their emotions into a superpower. Ethan views emotions as information and wants the rest of us to adopt this perspective, which is a noble goal. When we learn how to activate our emotions in the right ways at the right time, they help us figure out how to react to a situation and make the right choices. Emotions are akin to an immune system making us more alert to our surroundings.

The book’s big contribution: The organization of the book reinforces a practical way to become more self-aware about your emotions and better regulate them. Ethan presents three main internal ways you can shift your emotions: through your senses, attention, and perspective. After he explains how to shift from the inside out, he then switches to the outside in. The three external ways to shift include adjusting your place and space, your relationships, and culture. To help understand how to tackle culture, which can be harder than the others, Ethan further breaks it down into three parts: beliefs and values; norms; and practices. The book’s next section is all about learning how to go from knowing you can shift your emotions to knowing how to actually shift them.

3. Leaders Make the Future: 10 New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI, Third Edition, by Bob Johansen, Jeremy Kirshbaum and Gabe Cervantes.

Why read the third edition of this book if you’ve read an earlier one? Well, this version is 75 percent revised and expanded. And 9 of the 10 skills are AI augmented, including  future back curiosity, clarity, dilemma flipping, bio-engaging, immersive learning, depolarizing,  commons creating, smart mob swarming, and humility. The 10^th is a solo skill: human calming.

The book’s big contribution: The book’s authors focus on helping readers expand their perspective on what it means to be human with AI augmentation when so much uncertainty swirls around us. In addition to offering practical and innovative leadership practices to try, the authors provide ethical guidelines too. And Bob Johansen, who wrote the two prior versions by himself, is a great role model for this new world. Bob’s name for his AI chatbot? “Stretch.”

4. Becoming Better: The Groundbreaking Science of Personal Transformation by Ryan Gottfredson.

This book serves as a science-based guide to transform yourself by developing your “Being Side” that is, your mindset, your mental processes, your self-awareness and your emotions. If you’re like most humans, you tend to work on improving your skills, your “Doing Side,” by taking more classes and getting more certifications. Yet, when you work on enhancing your “Being Side” by basically upgrading your internal operating system, you can make huge positive impacts on your work and personal life. 

The book’s big contribution:  In addition to creating the terms “Being Side” and “Doing Side,” Ryan introduces two other valuable concepts  – “self-protection” and “value creation.”  The latter two help you understand how your internal operating system is wired and its impact on you, especially for enhancing your “Being Side.” For more about these two concepts and the book as a whole, check out my blog post Why you want to improve your “being” side, not just your “doing” side

5.The Little Book of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Living Better by Paul Zak.  

This book features 45 cardinal virtues. Over the years, research in neuroscience and positive psychology have confirmed Aristotle’s hypothesis that individuals improve their quality of life by behaving virtuously. That’s because virtuous behaviors are “prosocial,” meaning that you put others ahead of yourself when doing them. And in doing so you draw others to you. 

The book’s big contribution: The physical package of this book as well as its connection to an app distinguishes this book and helps you live its lessons. Each virtue has its own definition, a description of its impact on the brain, a related quote, and three suggested ways to practice the virtue. The book’s print edition also includes a note page for each virtue. In addition to guiding you to take actions to enrich your social networks and improve your happiness, the book also provides access to Paul’s app SIX. This app, which works with a wearable device and measures what your brain values, will help you track your progress toward learning to live better. For more about it, you can read my blog Why you want to experience key moments – ideally 6 a day. (I’ve been using the app daily since late April.)

What are you reading, watching, or listening to these days that you recommend? Please share! 

Happy New Year! And happy reading and/or listening to books!